When Playgirl debuted in June 1973, readers likely picked up the new magazine because it featured: a nude Lyle Waggoner (The Carol Burnett Show), an interview with Cloris Leachman (The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Last Picture Show), and a seven-page spread of Ryan Macdonald (Days of Our Lives). But it also featured a short-running series “Idol in the Raw” developed by artist Joe Johnson. Johnson was popular with the gay community for his comics Miss Thing, Big Dick, Fun Buns, and Alpha and the Scorpions, that ran in The Advocate Magazine. However, his “Idol in the Raw” contributions to Playgirl, which sold out its first run of over 600,000 copies in four days, likely exposed his work to the largest audience of his career. “Idol in the Raw” was a two-page caricaturized depiction of a nude celebrity in the “Miscellaneous” section of the magazine.
That June, Johnson drew Mark Spitz, the American Olympic swimmer who won seven gold medals and set seven world records at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Beyond the gold and records, he was most famous for his mustache, which a Russian coach suggested slowed him down. The mustache and medals are prominently featured, and Spitz is depicted shaving his legs. Part of the novelty of this illustration, and of Playgirl in general, was seeing male celebrities in the nude, and Johnson definitely delivered.
In July, he featured Johnny Carson only wearing a long, strategically placed tie. At the time, Carson was just over 10 years into his 30-year run at The Tonight Show. He was in everyone’s home at night, and here was his likeness in Playgirl.
Johnson ended his run with the series in August, with Elvis Presley holding a teddy bear over his genitals as he sang. In 1973, Elvis was in the jumpsuit- and Vegas-era of his career, but Johnson draws a younger Elvis from the period when his song “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear” was a number one hit.
After those three installments, “Idol in the Raw” shifted to two other illustrators who took over duties continuing in the same style and format until the series ended four months later in January 1974.
But who was Joe Johnson?
Joe Johnson was, by most accounts, the “first openly gay cartoonist” who ushers in a trend in gay comics allowing the gay community to poke fun at themselves. While gay men were frequently the butt of jokes in other popular comics of the time, this was the first time that someone from inside the community was poking fun at himself and his friends. Johnson produced 177 comics and cartoons in The Advocate alone (between February 1970 and December 1975), but also produced work for GayTimes, Tangents, Playgirl, and other magazines. He ran what we’d today call a micro press (Funny Bone Press), producing greeting cards and his only book—…and so, this is YOUR life, Miss Thing (in 1973
So much of what predates his work are cartoons reacting to the news, and things that happened to the gay community, but by lending humor and lightness to The Advocate, Johnson’s didn’t argue for why gay men had a right to be open about who they were. Instead, he simply captured life as it was and normalized it. Which was the legacy that he passed onto gay cartoonists that came after him: Howard Cruse (Wendel and Stuck Rubber Baby), Robert Triptow (Gay Comix and Class Photo), and Gerald Donelan (It’s a Gay Life) among them.
Johnson understood Playgirl’s premise from the start: that men, even the most famous men in popular culture, could be looked at, desired, teased, and even made ridiculous. For readers who picked up the magazine for Waggoner or Macdonald, or the novelty of male nudity itself, Johnson’s drawings offered something sharper than a pinup: a gay cartoonist’s eye turning male celebrity into lust, humor, and recognition.
Michael MacBride, PhD, is an intensely curious author and researcher, based out of Minneapolis.
